In 2007, staff at Las Baulas National Park, Drexel University, and Brooklyn Botanic Garden began a research collaboration with the goal to document all vascular plants growing without cultivation at Las Baulas National Park, Costa Rica. So far, three trips have been made to study the park’s flora. In July 2009, a fourth trip will be made, and this blog will document what we find.
Gerry and Susan pressing plants at the fieldstation in March 2008.
Parque Marino Las Baulas is on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and is best known not for its flora but its fauna, specifically sea turtles. The following is from the Leatherback Trust’s website: “The park protects the most important leatherback nesting beaches in the Pacific Ocean. Our scientists have trained park rangers and guides, worked with local school children and advised the local community on living in harmony with the leatherbacks. Before the Park was established poachers took 100% of nests. Now almost all nests are protected and a hatchery protects nests that would be washed away by high tides or eaten by predators. Now thousands of hatchlings crawl to the ocean every season where five years ago only a few survived.”
Young leatherbacks fresh out of the nest.
Besides the beach habitats used by the sea turtles, the mature dry forests found at Las Baulas are also under threat in Central America due to farming, burning, and development. The Encyclopedia of Earth reports that this ecosystem is rarer and under greater threat than tropical rainforests. Revisit this blog to see what interesting plants and wildlife BBG scientists and collaborators are discovering in this fascinating area.
Posts from this Expedition:- Packing for Costa Rica… Ever…
- Last Minute Packing
- We are on the way to the airpo…
- Beach Collecting
- Wicked Adaptations
- Animal Adaptations
- The Drifters
- Shots of the Day
- Green Turtles
- From Field to Herbarium
- Acacia: A Model of Cooperation
- We got back at 3AM. We’ll have…
- Playa Grande Animals
- Just back from Norfolk where I…